


So You Think You Can Dance?

by palia



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Dancing, Drunken Shenanigans, Eventual Smut, M/M, Phichit is a theater enthusiast, Seductive dancing, Slow Burn-ish, Viktor runs a dance studio, Youtube is a plot device, Yuuri is a struggling student, eventual falling in love, will update the tags as I go
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-26
Updated: 2017-04-26
Packaged: 2018-10-24 02:30:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10732296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palia/pseuds/palia
Summary: After getting a serious injury right before the Grand Prix Final, Yuuri decides to take a break from skating and use the time spent recovering to get his degree. He didn't expect to be approached in Starbucks by a gorgeous, electrifying stranger whose silver hair, crystal eyes, and background in hip-hop leave Yuuri with the pestering feeling that he's seen him somewhere before.And then there's dancing.





	So You Think You Can Dance?

Yuuri glared at his computer screen, squeezing his fists into his hair and focusing all the hatred he held in his heart onto this one inanimate object. The cursor onscreen blinked insult after insult, taunting him until the pure white of the word document made his eyes hurt. He pinched the bridge of his nose, massaging the spot where his glasses rested. Squeezing his eyes shut Yuuri let his glasses fall back into place, lifting his hands to massage his temples. A deep sigh escaped his lips as he contemplated the possible repercussions of throwing his laptop across the Starbucks lobby and hopping on the next plane leaving from New York to Japan.

Yuuri was supposed to be editing his third paper of the week. Three out of eight total and a final essay he hadn’t even started yet, all due by the end of the week for his portfolio. Writing the Essay was a class he had dreaded taking since he first saw it listed as a requirement for his major. He’d crammed all the time-consuming science courses, labs, and recitations into the first three years of his college career, subconsciously (ok, very consciously) procrastinating on finishing his required writing course. He wasn’t a bad English student, but English wasn’t his first language and he wasn’t much of an effectively persuasive writer if he had anything to say about it. Not to mention his professor is, for lack of a better word, a dick. Yuuri quickly learned that he had to dedicate at least three days to writing any essay graded by him to receive at least a B.

Yuuri spent most weekdays after classes at the Starbucks on West 4th. He found the smell of coffee and the buzz of other students doing their own work an ideal environment for concentration. Yuuri could work at the apartment if he absolutely had to, but if Phichit was home and rehearsing his lines out loud or imploring Yuuri for help with Instagram captions, he often lost focus and wound up staying up all night trying to finish his work, hating himself all the while and throughout the next day.

The Starbucks was airy and spacious, even with the many other college kids filing in and out. Yuuri was seated at a small, dark wooden table across from an empty, dark wooden chair. Next to the empty chair sat a trash can beside a long table upon which rested sugar packets, coffee sleeves, napkins, stirring rods, and straws. To Yuuri’s right, several dull red arm chairs were currently being occupied by chatting students holding Frappuccino’s and latte’s. Yuuri was sat directly across from the workstation, where employees placed drink after drink on the counter and called out names and numbers. People collected their drinks and snacks and went about their days.

Before coming here, Yuuri had hoped that by the end of the day he would have finished editing his third essay and had moved onto his fourth. However, seeing as his wordcount hadn’t crawled any higher since he first sat down in Starbucks two hours ago, he was having more and more trouble seeing himself not being totally fucked.

He rubbed his eyes, tiredness from many sleepless nights of working and procrastinating inevitably catching up with him. He picked up his coffee cup and tossed it back, filling his whole mouth with caffeine, milk, and sugar (Yuuri usually just ordered the first thing he saw, he wasn’t especially picky), holding the cup upside down against his lips until gravity pulled every last drop into his mouth.

“Wow.”

Yuuri opened his eyes—they had closed, his body relishing in caffeinated bliss—and saw a man holding his own cup of coffee staring down at him from across the table. His astonishing ice blue eyes, platinum hair so light it looked silver, amused heart-shaped smile, and perfectly chiseled jawline caused Yuuri to swallow his mouthful of coffee in one large gulp. Too much for his poor esophagus, some coffee tickled his trachea as he breathed and then he was coughing until his chest hurt.

“I’m so sorry!” The stranger rushed over as Yuuri coughed, gently slapping Yuuri’s back in a feeble attempt to help. “Are you okay?” he asked when Yuuri’s coughing had finally died down.

Yuuri looked up at the man, tears staining his vision. He tried to wipe his eyes inconspicuously so he could get a better look, thinking maybe he hallucinated seeing someone so flawlessly attractive in real life.

Nope. Definitely not a hallucination.

The stranger’s hand was still on his back, Yuuri realized, and he shifted in his seat, turning slightly towards the stranger so the hand fell away.

“I’m fine,” Yuuri croaked. He cleared his throat. “I’m fine. Sorry about that.”

“No no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” The stranger moved back to the other side of the table behind the wooden chair opposite Yuuri. He placed his hands on the back of it and drummed his fingers. “Would you mind if I sat down?”

When Yuuri didn’t immediately answer, the stranger continued. “I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. My apartment’s wi-fi isn’t working and I need the internet for a bit. I promise I’ll only be here for an hour at most.”

Yuuri stared, jaw slack. When he realized he still hadn’t answered the stranger, he mentally slapped himself and pushed out an affirmative.

The stranger thanked him gratefully and sat down, opening his bookbag and pulling out a laptop. Yuuri peeled his eyes away and stared back at his word document. His blank, empty, sad word document. A much less pleasant sight to the man now sitting in front of him, typing away and looking at god-knows what.

Yuuri tried to ignore the stranger but eventually chanced a glance up. The man was wearing earbuds and had a hand over his mouth in a pensive manner. He stared at his screen with laser focus, obviously very absorbed in whatever he was looking at.

Yuuri had seen several parts of the world. He considered himself well-traveled, and he had met his fair share of individuals both interesting and attractive.

But in that moment, Yuuri was certain there wasn’t anyone in existence that was as shockingly, perfectly beautiful as the man sitting in front of him. That much was obvious to Yuuri.

What was less obvious was the faint recognition that came from seeing the stranger’s face. Yuuri couldn’t shake the feeling that he had _seen_ this man before. Yuuri was sure he wasn’t creative enough to imagine a man this perfect but no matter how thoroughly he searched the recesses of his mind for any scrap of memory, he came up short.

Realizing he was staring, Yuuri redirected his attention to what he came here to do in the first-place and painstakingly filled his sad, empty computer document with words.

After 25 minutes Yuuri had managed to fully edit two more pages of his essay, littered with quotations and footnotes. Once he reached the end of his newest paragraph he leaned back against his chair and sighed. It wasn’t as much as he had hoped to have done by now but it was something. He picked up his coffee cup, only remembering it was empty when he felt how light it was. He put it back on the counter, snaked his hands under his glasses and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyelids. Keeping his eyes open was becoming a challenge, and he knew he would eventually have to give in to his biological needs and sleep for an entire day. But that wouldn’t be today. Or tomorrow. Or within the next month probably.

“Do you want another?”

Yuuri pulled his hands from his face and opened his eyes. The stranger was staring at him with those impossibly blue eyes that Yuuri still had trouble believing could be expressed by the human genome.

“I’m sorry?”

The stranger pointed a long, slender finger at his empty coffee cup.

“Oh! No, no that’s ok!” Yuuri waved his hands frantically in front of the stranger. The man responded with a friendly smile.

“You look like you need it.”

Ok, that was a little rude.

Yuuri was about to protest again when the man stood up and went to the counter. Two minutes later he came back with a new cup and two packets of sugar. He carefully placed them beside Yuuri’s laptop then took Yuuri’s empty cup and threw it in the trash can near their table. He sat back down and gave Yuuri a very amicable, heart-shaped smile.

Yuuri stared at the coffee, then back at the stranger.

“Um.”

“I ordered a triple espresso shot. I don’t know your order but this will keep you awake if that’s what you’re after.”

“Um,” Yuuri repeated intelligently. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think of a proper response to this man’s unnecessary kindness. “Thanks.”

Wow. Excellent, Yuuri.

He wordlessly picked up the coffee and took a sip. He pursed his lips and scrunched his nose, the taste much more bitter than he was used to. He removed the lid and ripped open the sugar packets, dumping them into the drink.

“I’m Viktor, by the way.”

Yuuri looked up at the stranger. It _seemed_ like he was speaking to him, but Yuuri twisted and looked behind himself just to be sure he wasn’t addressing someone else. When he turned back around the man laughed lightly, eyes expressing gentle mirth. “May I know your name?”

Yuuri gulped. He hadn’t come to Starbucks prepared to strike up a conversation with a gorgeous stranger, but this man had been nice enough to buy him coffee when he was on the verge of collapse, and it wasn’t like he was getting much done anyway.

“I’m Yuuri.” Viktor beamed.

“I have a student named Yuri!”

Yuuri hesitated, unsure whether he was supposed to inquire further or if this man, Viktor, he’d said, was making small talk just to be polite. When the excited smile didn’t leave Viktor’s face, Yuuri decided to chance it.

“Are you a teacher…?” Yuuri asked hesitantly.

“You could say that.” Viktor lowered his laptop screen and put his elbows on the table, cradling his chin in twined fingers. “More of an instructor. I run a dance studio not far from here.”

Yuuri couldn’t help but light up. “What kind of dance?”

Viktor smiled again, seemingly satisfied that he had piqued Yuuri’s interest. “I teach a hip hop class. There are a lot of different dance styles taught there, though.”

There it was again. The nagging feeling that he should remember who Viktor was, like he had seen or watched him from afar at one point in his life. He couldn’t put his finger on it but…

“Wow that’s, um, really cool.” Yuuri offered awkwardly. He took another gulp of his drink, unsure what to say next. Luckily Viktor was, apparently, interested in keeping the conversation alive.

“What are you working on?” He nodded his head towards Yuuri’s laptop.

“Oh, it’s just my final portfolio for my English class,” Yuuri answered nonchalantly.

Viktor’s eyes widened. “Wow! Are you in college? How old are you?”

Yuuri twiddled his hands and directed his gaze at a particularly interesting swirl in the wooden table, trying to hide his blush from this weirdly friendly, absurdly attractive stranger.

“Um, I’m 23.” Viktor’s eyes widened again. “I took a gap year two years ago to, um, pursue an athletic career? But I’m back now.”

“What kind of athletic career?”

Yuuri traced the swirl with his fingertip. “Figure skating.”

“Wow!” Viktor’s heart shaped smile grew ten-fold. “That’s amazing! You’re actually a figure skater?”

Not many people reacted so excitedly when Yuuri spoke about his brief affair with professional figure skating, so a reaction like Viktor’s made Yuuri blush horribly. He tipped his head down further until he was staring down at his lap.

“I was, yeah.”

“Why did you stop?”

Yuuri met Viktor’s eyes. He looked genuinely curious. Even if Yuuri wasn’t sure why a stranger was so interested in his life, he took another gulp of his drink and let the caffeine hype him up so he had the courage to answer in earnest.

“Well, I got a full ride to university for figure skating and thought it was what I wanted to pursue professionally.” Yuuri nervously shimmied his shoulders, directing his eyes back into his lap. “I made it to the Grand Prix Final, which is this big international skating competition, but I had an accident in training a few days before it and I couldn’t skate with my injury.” Yuuri looked up and was met with Viktor’s undivided attention. Yuuri took a deep breath and continued. “I got surgery and then came back to school and decided I wanted to get my degree while I recovered.”

Viktor hummed, nodding slowly. Yuuri nervously took another sip of his coffee, unsure if he had said too much and bothered this stranger that was probably only talking to him to be polite. Yuuri’s leg started bouncing out of its own volition, most likely due to a combination of nerves and caffeine that he was definitely starting to feel now.

“How did you get into figure skating?”

Yuuri’s lips parted, surprised and utterly dumbfounded by Viktor’s unwavering interest. People like Viktor didn’t talk to people like Yuuri. There wasn’t anything to gain from continuing this conversation, at least nothing obvious enough that Yuuri could think of. Surely a man like Viktor had better things to do than question a dorky stranger about his figure skating career?

But Viktor again looked really, genuinely curious and his eyes were so captivating and his voice was so comforting that Yuuri found himself helplessly unable to avoid his queries.

“Well,” Yuuri began hesitantly. “I did ballet when I was really young, and my instructor said I should try ice skating. So I did.”

“You do ballet!?” The volume of Viktor’s exclamation made Yuuri jump. “Sorry, I just,” Viktor scratched the back of his head sheepishly, “I get excited about dancing. It’s sort of my whole life.”

“That’s ok,” Yuuri quietly appeased. “I get it.”

They sat in silence. Yuuri finished the rest of his espresso. His body buzzed with caffeinated energy, which wasn’t particularly useful now that he was inescapably distracted by this stranger named Viktor with the deep voice and eyes he could swim in and shiny silver hair and a jaw and cheekbones that looked like they had been personally sculpted by Aphrodite herself.

A pitter patter cut through the silence. Yuuri twisted in his chair towards the sound behind him. Gentle rain hitting the glass windows quickly transformed into a heavy shower that promised instant soakage upon exiting the building. Yuuri’s shoulders sagged.

“Shit,” Yuuri hissed.

“You don’t have an umbrella?”

Yuuri turned back around to Viktor who was smiling at him amusedly.

Yuuri shook his head and sheepishly looked down. “I didn’t know it’d rain,” he muttered.

“You should check the weather more, Yuuri.”

Yuuri might have had the sense to be offended were it not for the way Viktor’s accent curled around his name. Yuuri hadn’t noticed it before because it was very light, but now he couldn’t unhear it. Russian, maybe?

Instead of asking Yuuri just buried his head in his hands and groaned.

He heard rustling, the sound of papers shuffling and of plastic pens being pushed into one another.

“Here.”

Yuuri looked up and came face to face with a closed, bright red umbrella. Viktor looked at him, clearly expecting him to take it. Yuuri flushed.

“No no, I can’t take your umbrella.” Yuuri frantically waved his hands in front of his face again, his best attempt to dispel the suggestion from existence.

“Hm,” Viktor retracted his arm. “I suppose you’re right.” Viktor placed the umbrella on the table and bent to the side, rummaging through his bag again. He straightened and uncapped a black sharpie marker he had pulled out, took Yuuri’s now empty coffee cup, scribbled something on it and gave it back to Yuuri with upturned lips.

Yuuri stared at the cup for a few seconds before hesitantly picking it up and examining it. Written in black was an address that he didn’t recognize. He returned his gaze to Viktor, who was still smiling.

“That’s where my studio is.” Viktor closed his laptop and stood up. “Bring it back to me when you get a chance.” He packed his laptop into his bag, completely ignoring Yuuri gaping like a fish across from him. Instead he leaned in, invading Yuuri’s personal space just a touch more than he was used to, his piercing gaze freezing Yuuri where he sat. “Be sure to come soon. That’s my only umbrella.” He spoke low, just above a whisper, and winked.

Yuuri shivered.

The moment vanished after only a second when he stood straight again and shot Yuuri a megawatt grin, revealing a row of perfectly aligned, perfectly white, perfectly perfect teeth.

“I’ll be waiting!” Viktor waved and walked away, exiting the coffee shop.

Yuuri stared at the door for a full ten seconds before pulling himself back into reality.

A god of a man had given him his umbrella and an address to return it to.

He had to finish his Writing the Essay portfolio.

He stared and stared at his document but couldn’t stop mentally replaying his and Viktor’s interaction.

Eventually, accepting that he was still completely fucked, Yuuri packed up his things and ventured into the rain, pulling open the red umbrella with the initials V.N. written on the handle in black marker.

The same black marker that was used to write the address on the empty coffee cup Yuuri currently held in his other hand.

 

* * *

 

 

After shaking out the umbrella outside his apartment complex, Yuuri fished out a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He walked up three flights of stairs and turned until he was facing a grey door with a worn-down black number 8. Yuuri took out the same key and unlocked his door. He pushed it open and started to toe off one of his shoes when he heard a panicked yell.

“SHUT THE DOOR!”

Yuuri stumbled, nearly falling over his shoes. Phichit rushed past him and ran himself into the door, shoving it shut with both his palms flat. He turned towards Yuuri, wide-eyed and panting. Phichit’s hair stuck to his forehead and the bags under his eyes could rival Yuuri’s own, but that was nothing new. They were both students, after all.

“Phichit, what—” Yuuri started to ask before Phichit cut him off.

“Hamsters!”

Yuuri sighed, letting his bag fall from his shoulder and onto the floor. “Again?”

“Yes Yuuri, again.” Phichit let his hands fall back at his sides. “I took them out of their cage and put them on my stomach while I was watching TV and—”

“Let me guess. You fell asleep and when you woke up they were all gone.”

Phichit narrowed his eyes and pouted. “Maybe.”

“You need to stop falling asleep when they’re out.”

“Ok Yuuri I get it! I’m a shitty pet owner! I lose track of my children more often than I probably should!”

Yuuri raised an eyebrow. “Probably?”

“Just help me find them!” Phichit whined helplessly, fisting Yuuri’s T-shirt in both hands and looking up at him with the best puppy-dog eyes he could muster while still looking slightly insane.

Yuuri sighed. “You said you were watching TV?”

Phichit buried his head into Yuuri’s chest and answered with a muffled “Yes.”

“Ok, well there’s one on the coffee table,” Yuuri pointed out.

Phichit whipped his head around so fast Yuuri was surprised it didn’t snap off. When he saw the grey and white hamster twitching its nose curiously at them atop the wooden table, Phichit let out a relieved sigh and jogged over to the table, quickly scooping his little friend into his hands and kissing the top of his small head.

“How many times have I told you not to wander off when I can’t watch you?” Phichit wagged his finger. “Honestly you bunch are so mischievous I don’t know what to do with you.”

Yuuri huffed a laugh and shook his head fondly while Phichit lectured the hamster quietly. Yuuri toed off his other shoe before padding around the apartment in search of the rest of his roommate’s pets.

Once they had recovered the rest of the bunch (which had taken about a half-hour), Phichit tucked them into their cage and reemerged from his room, trudging to the navy-blue couch in the center of their living room and collapsing on it face first. Yuuri padded over and joined him, sitting on what cushion Phichit wasn’t taking up.

Their apartment was, in a word, livable. It wasn’t especially big, but both Phichit and Yuuri had their own rooms to sleep in and they shared a common area and a kitchen. They managed to find a TV for cheap and had lugged it up the stairs together, rewarding themselves after they successfully set it up in their living room by having a movie and wine night, which eventually turned into a vodka and bar-hopping night that left Phichit perched next to the toilet the entire day after.

It wasn’t much, but it was home.

“Did you do your portfolio?” Phichit mumbled into the cushion.

“Yeah Phichit I finished my whole portfolio.”

Phichit picked his head up and narrowed his eyes. “Fuck you.”

Yuuri took his glasses off and put them on the coffee table next to where he had set down the empty coffee mug. He rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his eyes for what felt like the thousandth time that day.

“I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped,” Yuuri grumbled.

Phichit propped his arms under his chin. “You’re usually really productive after classes.”

“Yeah, not this time.”

“What happened?”

Yuuri’s brain immediately conjured up the memory of Viktor. He tried to keep himself from blushing, and failed miserably. Of course Phichit noticed and immediately sat up, any tiredness now invisible and replaced with intense interest. “Yuuri. What happened?”

Yuuri swallowed. “Well, I wasn’t really being productive anyway…”

“Yuuri!” Phichit yelled, bouncing on his knees excitedly, sensing a juicy story coming.

Yuuri looked away, embarrassed. “Some guy sat across from me and he bought me coffee and we talked.”

Phichit leaned in. “Talked about what?”

“…dancing. And figure skating.”

“Dancing and figure skating.”

Yuuri nodded. Phichit stared at Yuuri, trying to come up with the bits of the story that Yuuri clearly wasn’t telling him. Phichit craned his neck over the back of the couch, seemed to notice something, and looked back at Yuuri.

“Yuuri.”

“Hm?” Yuuri squeaked, watching his own twiddling thumbs like they were the most interesting sight in the world.

“Whose umbrella is that?”

Yuuri didn’t stop playing with his hands, but Phichit watched with scrutiny as his blush deepened.

“Um. Viktor’s.”

“And who, may I ask, is Viktor?”

“The guy.”

“The guy from where?”

“From Starbucks.”

“The guy that bought you coffee?”

Yuuri nodded, his face now closely resembling a tomato on fire.

“And why do you have his umbrella?” Phichit continued in an infuriatingly calm tone of voice.

“It was raining.”

“I mean why do you _still_ have his umbrella.”

“Um,” Yuuri started. “He said I could borrow it.”

“Did he _give_ it to you?” It felt like Phichit was pulling teeth to get these answers out of him, but Yuuri knew he was the one making it this difficult, so he couldn’t protest.

“No. He let me borrow it.”

“Uh-huh.” Phichit adjusted his position on the couch so he was sitting on top of his right foot while his left leg dangled over the seat. Then he noticed the writing on the coffee cup sitting on the coffee table. He picked it up, scanning the bold black letters. “And how do you plan to give it back to him?”

Yuuri hid his face in his hands, not that it did much good towards hiding the blush that had already crept down his neck. “He told me to go to that address and give it to him when I got the chance.”

“Oh my god Yuuri, is this where he lives!?”

“No! God, no!” Yuuri snatched the cup from Phichit and put it back on the coffee table. “It’s the address to his studio.”

“Studio?”

“Dance studio,” Yuuri hugged his knees.

Phichit sat back, smiling mischievously. “So he’s a dancer?”

“Instructor,” Yuuri mumbled.

“Ok.” Phichit slapped both hands on his knees and leaned forward. “So a nice man let you borrow his umbrella and you’re going to give it back at some point in the future. Seems normal enough. But!” Phichit sat up straight and looked at Yuuri, who hadn’t looked up once during the conversation. “Judging from the way you’re blushing, I’m assuming something else happened that you’re not telling me.”

“Well, you know what happens when you assume…” Yuuri mumbled.

“He flirted with you, didn’t he?”

Yuuri froze.

“Oh my god, he did! Wait.” Phichit scooted closer so he was right in Yuuri’s face. “Is he hot?”

Yuuri buried his face in his hands and groaned.

Phichit screamed.

“What did he say? Oh my god tell me everything.”

Yuuri exhaled a heavy sigh. Nothing in his life stayed hidden for long when Phichit was concerned.

So Yuuri retold his encounter with Viktor. He told Phichit how Viktor had asked him his name and then about his portfolio. He recounted how interested Viktor had been when he mentioned his figure skating career, then how he had handed him the umbrella with a wink and a whisper to bring it to him soon, how Viktor had walked out of the coffee shop and into the rain without an umbrella to keep himself from getting soaked.

Phichit ate it up, smile growing wider and wider with every sentence. “What did he look like?”

Yuuri picked at a piece of lint on his sock. “Like the universe decided to create the world’s most impossibly beautiful person and name him Viktor.”

“Yuuri!” Phichit grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “You have to return that fucking umbrella ASAP!”

“I know that Phichit,” Yuuri took Phichit’s hands off his shoulders. “I’m not just going to keep some random guy’s umbrella.”

“I _mean_ you have to go to his studio, return the umbrella, and get his number.”

Yuuri’s eyes widened. He shook his head. “No, no I can’t.”

“Yes, yes you can. And you will.”

“Phichit,” Yuuri tried to reason, “this guy is _insane_. Like, I’ve never seen anyone more attractive than him. Ever. On a scale of 1 to 10, he’s objectively a 5,000. I’m, like, a 5 at best.”

“Ok, Yuuri, you are way more than a 5,” Phichit deadpanned. “Clearly this Viktor guy thinks you’re cute.”

Yuuri’s face bloomed scarlet for the umpteenth time that day. Phichit cackled and brought Yuuri into a bone-crushing hug which Yuuri did not return, grumbling instead. “We’re returning that umbrella. Tomorrow.”

Yuuri pulled away and stared. “ _We_?”

“Yes, we.” Yuuri opened his mouth to protest but Phichit cut him off. “You can’t tell me that the hottest man alive hit on you and expect me not to come with when you go see him again.”

“I’m just returning his umbrella.” Yuuri whined, but he knew it was useless.

“We’ll see,” Phichit sing-songed with a smirk.

* * *

That night Yuuri lay awake in bed glaring at the ceiling. Every time his eyes shut, all he saw were Viktor’s sparkling eyes and heart-shaped smile.

Like he needed another reason to stay awake all night.

Yuuri groaned and flopped his arm onto the nightstand, feeling around for his phone. After finding and unlocking it, he read the clock—3:45AM—and sighed. He’d been going to sleep at what he considered to be a reasonable hour (2:30AM) for the past week. Yuuri opened the Youtube app, deciding that watching some Buzzfeed videos and Vine compilations would eventually lull him to sleep.

On his homepage were recommended videos of different skater’s ice skating programs (none of his own, Yuuri never watched himself skate unless his coach had made him), funny dog videos, and hip hop choreography.

When Yuuri had started training for the senior division at 18 years old, his coach, Celestino, had made him take a hip hop class in addition to ballet training (and unfortunately, pole-dancing) to help sharpen his movements and gain more knowledge of choreographic intent. In short, his coach pushed it onto Yuuri to “broaden his horizons” and to “give his skating something special”. These hip-hop classes in Detroit were where he met Phichit, who was very into all types of performance art: dancing, singing, acting, etc., and his dancing background helped him immensely in the musicals he was cast in when he got to college.

The classes were taught by an instructor for a few hours a day, a few days a week. To get the most out of learning each routine, Yuuri and Phichit scheduled a lot of after-class practice time for themselves, even going so far as to learn new choreography once they mastered their instructor’s.

Together, Yuuri and Phichit stumbled upon a then-modest dance company on Youtube that posted choreography performed by instructors and their students. Yuuri and Phichit obsessed over these videos for the better part of a year, learning as much as they could and becoming very, very good at hip hop and street dancing.

Yuuri quickly found himself watching one particular instructor’s choreography over and over again.

Yuuri became completely mesmerized by the man’s movements, by the way his body popped and locked like it was created to perform and enthrall.

Yuuri learned every dance the instructor posted up until that year, practicing them so many times he could recreate the routines in his sleep.

Yuuri memorized every step he took, every direction he thrusted, and every stomp and touch he graced to the floor.

Yuuri especially remembered how unrealistically attractive he was: long silver hair tied back in a high ponytail, pale skin glistening with sweat, and blue eyes sparkling with confidence and determination that touched the deepest parts of Yuuri’s soul and lit his heart on fire.

At eighteen years old, Yuuri had been completely infatuated with a Youtube star.

At twenty-three years old, Yuuri shot up in his bed at 3:45AM as he read the caption of a recommended video he had watched over a hundred times five years ago:

_Drake (featuring Nicki Minaj) – Make Me Proud – Choreography by Viktor Nikiforov._

In the center of the thumbnail was the same Viktor he had re-watched every day five years ago, the same Viktor from the coffee shop that day, the same Viktor whose umbrella was still sitting in front of the door of his apartment, standing with both hands touching his chest and head cocked to the side, long ponytailed silver hair falling behind him and a subtle smile playing at his heart-shaped lips.

Yuuri Katsuki was approached in Starbucks by a man he had never met before but who he had been in love with five years ago.

Yuuri Katsuki had to return an umbrella lent to him by Viktor fucking Nikiforov.

Yuuri dropped his phone.

“Fuck.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think! This is my first multichapter fic and I would love and appreciate any kind of feedback, thoughts, or comments! Find me on tumblr at phichits-eyebrows .tumblr. com!


End file.
